Malta Arts Festival 2015 (10th Edition)

The Malta Arts Festival is a showcase of top quality events which places local and overseas’ artists and performers side by side.

The programme’s diversity enabled the Arts Festival to be open and accessible to all. The summer slot enables most events to be held open air. Falling as it does during the peak tourist season, the festival attracts a significant overseas audience as well.

The festival is the highlight in our cultural calendar and as such, we see it as having a clear role to play in bringing about a collaboration between Maltese and foreign artists. Joint performances and workshops held on its fringes help enhance local artistic development and provide impetus to cultural innovation on the islands. For audiences, the Malta Arts Festival is a bonanza of performance, music and dance, and offers something from all artistic forms. The event has , over the years, also opened up little used and special venues, such as the Old Opera House ruins in Valletta and the Argotti Gardens, and has been an impetus for the islands to set about providing a greater diversity of art and performance spaces.

The Official Programme of Events for the 10th edition of the Malta International Arts Festival:

Event: An Intensive course by the 14th International Contemporary Dance Hybrid Malta 2015

Celebrating its 14th season, the International Contemporary Dance Hybrid Malta, led by artistic director Francesca Abela Tranter (Contact Dance Company), creates opportunities where artists get together and communicate through the language of the body. This year, the Hybrid invites international established guest artists of repute Yen-Ching Lin (Taiwan) and Anton Lachky (Slovakia) to conduct a six day intensive course focusing on master classes, contemporary technique, repertory (Akram Khan Dance Company), and choreographic creative workshops culminating into an informal sharing which will be open to the public, with participants and other local dance artists, held in the Blue Box Theatre MSpace, Msida, Malta.

Pendulum Choir is an original choral piece of nine a cappella voices and eighteen hydraulic jacks. The choir stands on tilting platforms, constituting a living, sonorous body which expresses itself through various physical states and whose plasticity varies at the mercy of its sonority, be it abstract, repetitive, lyrical or narrative sounds.

Event: Meeting the Odyssey – ‘Landing_an Odyssey’

Date: 10th – 12th, and 16th – 18th July at 9pm

Venue: Baċir Nu. 1, Bormla

Meeting the Odyssey is a social and artistic collaborative project set on the ship named Hoppet that has sailed from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea. Each summer from 2014 to 2016, artists and organisers from different European countries travel together, giving workshops and performing theatre pieces. Landing_an odyssey is the other side of nostos, of homesickness; of the impossibility of recognising, of being recognised; the other side of being back home after a long absence. Meeting the Odyssey in Malta is being held in collaboration with Transport Malta and Cospicua Local Council.

Event: Pixels Wave

Date: 10th – 26th July at 9pm

Venue: Valletta City Gate (Entrance is free)

Experimental and multi-disciplinarian, Miguel Chevalier comes to Malta with a new commission – Pixels Wave 2015, a generative and interactive virtual reality installation with a giant carpet of moving lights which will fill Republic Street at City Gate in front of Malta’s New Parliament Building. The installation will be opened on the 10th July and will remain throughout the festival. It will make use of various multi-coloured scenes, one following upon another in random fashion, each composed of symbolic motifs from the digital universe, mathematical symbols, and also fragments of Malta’s history.

Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (KCDC), one of the leading dance companies in the world, is widely identified with the work of Artistic Director Rami Be’er, whose exclusive and unique choreographic character has become the company’s trademark, both in Israel and abroad. With its technically strong and physically eclectic cast of dancers and its dynamic sensibility, KCDC characterises Israeli dance at its best and performs regularly in the most respected theatres and at leading festivals worldwide. Their original dance piece If At All is a moving theatrical event in figurative and abstract circles, from the closed form to the open structure.

Entrance: €15, student concession of €10. Those interested in attending must apply to francescatranter@gmail.com by no later than 30th June.

Event: Tabula Rasa

Date: 13th July at 7pm and 9pm

Venue: Blue Box Theatre, MSpace, Msida

Entrance: €15, concessions at €10

An intimate night of contemporary choreography – Four Malta-based choreographers, four dancers, four duets. Reducing all production to show the bare act of choreography, the night promises four different interpretations of a common theme. As a common project of choreographers Dorian Mallia, Diane Portelli, Francesca Tranter and Lucía Piquero, the night is designed to both challenge and inspire their work, limiting the thematic as well as the number of dancers they can use.

Event: The Musical Voyages of Marco Polo

Date: 13th July at 9pm

Venue: Argotti Gardens, Floriana

Entrance: €15, concessions at €10

Two of the most respected ensembles in the Mediterranean musical tradition, En Chordais and Constantinople join forces to recreate a colourful musical journey in tribute of Marco Polo. Commissioned by the Silk Road Art Music Festival of Hong Kong, this multidisciplinary performance offers a unique tableau of historical, musical and visual materials as well as new compositions.

Event: Noriko Ogawa

Date: 14th July at 9pm

Venue: TBA

Noriko Ogawa is one of the world’s leading classical pianists who achieved considerable renown since her success at the 1987 Leeds International Piano Competition. Recording exclusively for BIS Records, her complete Debussy series has earned her much acclaim and has established her as a fine Debussy specialist. The performance will be taking us on a beautiful and magical sound-world journey with the music of Ravel, Kanno, Debussy and Takemitsu.

“Ravishingly poetic playing” – The Telegraph

Event: ŻfinMalta – Je Tiens la Reine

Date: 15th – 16th July at 9pm

Venue: Argotti Gardens, Floriana

Entrance: €15, concessions at €10

In a contemporary adaptation of Mallarmé’s 1876 L’Après-midi d’un Faune and Debussy’s 1894 Prèlude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune, ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble tells the story of a faun’s encounter with the Ogygia-based Calypso. Like the sources that inspired it, ‘Je Tiens la Reine’ assimilates the suggestiveness of the poetry and the music and is interwoven with rituals, quests and regressions that are represented through an intricate dance choreography by Mavin Khoo, accompanied by a resonant composition by Renzo Spiteri and a narrative adaptation by Giuliana Fenech.

Over the last fifty years, internationally-renowned Talich Quartet has continued to evolve as a leading chamber music ensemble that has championed Czech musical art throughout the world. The Quartet was founded in 1964 by Jan Talich during his studies at the Prague Conservatory, and named after his uncle Vaclav Talich, the renowned chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. It is today one of the world’s finest string quartets. They will be performing Beethoven’s immortal Grosse Fuge, together with Ravel’s sublime string quartet and Janáček’s exquisite Intimate Letters.

Over 15 foreign and local, street and urban artists will be transforming Sliema’s unique promenade and gardens into a melting pot of art, creating an exceptional vibe for the hundreds of tourists and locals which flock to Sliema during the peak summer month of July. Facebook page

Event: Connecting Through Culture by MIAF+

Date: 18th- 19th July at 9pm

Venue: Yacht Marina, Ta’ Xbiex (Entrance is free)

This will be two days of celebrating the richness of the diversity of cultures and musical landscapes of the Embassies at Ta’ Xbiex, with artists literally coming from around the world to perform.

Event: Bar-to-Bar Quintet

Date: 20th July at 9pm

Venue: Palace Courtyard, Valletta

Entrance: €15, concessions at €10

Bar-to-Bar Quintet relishes every opportunity to perform as part of this more intimate formation. The quintet is made up of violinists Marcelline Agius and Klara Nazaj, viola player Nadia Debono, cellist Akos Kertesz, and pianist Joanne Camilleri who also founded this ensemble. This exciting concert will be featuring Bartók and Shostakovich.

Scripted by renowned local author and poet Immanuel Mifsud, and based on a story by Mario Philip Azzopardi, Faith, Hope u Charity is an epic play set in Malta at the start of the Second World War. Under the direction of Josette Ciappara, the play follows Marija, a young woman of twenty, as she volunteers as a nurse to help the wounded soldiers and casualties of war where she meets two young men who become enchanted by her.

Event: Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra MIAF+

Date: 23rd July at 9pm

Venue: Fort St Elmo, Valletta

Entrance: €10, concessions at €5

Founded in 1944, Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra (SYO) aim to provide an orchestral environment which is challenging, fun, friendly and supportive, in which young musicians of all backgrounds can develop their skills and nurture a lifelong love of music. We perform three concerts a year in some of the best concert halls in and around London. Young musicians normally start their orchestral career by joining our Training Orchestra, which is run by our Assistant Conductor, Dan Shilladay, who also leads string sectionals for our Main Orchestra. More experienced musicians then join the Main Orchestra, which is conducted by our Musical Director, Robert Hodge. This concert will be including one of the most-loved piano concertos of all time – Rachmaninov No.2 – which will be performed by Andrew Zolinsky.

Event: STOMP

Date: 23 – 25th July at 9pm

Venue: Pjazza Teatru Rjal, Valletta

Entrance: €30, concessions at €25

After having played over 20 thousand performances to more than 12 million people around the globe, the multi award-winning phenomenon Stomp makes its debut appearance in Malta this summer. Stomp is a percussion group, originating in Brighton, that continues to astound audiences across the world with its universal language of rhythm, theatre, comedy and dance.

Written around 420 years ago, this is one of the best known stories of all time about love, passion and tragedy – an example of Shakespeare’s great understanding of human nature and his ability to find universal human qualities and put them in a dramatic situation, creating timeless characters. MADC is again staging its annual play at San Anton Gardens. Directed by Luke Farrugia, with set and costumes designed by Isabel Warrington. It will also be completely sounds caped with the music of Jocelyn Pook in order to give it a completely holistic and Wagnerian feel.

Event: Malta Philharmonic Orchestra

Date: 26th July at 9pm

Venue: St George’s Square, Valletta (Entrance is free)

Event: Kelma Kelma, Nota Nota – Koffee Morning by MIAF+

Date: 28th – 30th July at 9pm

Venue: Pjazza Teatru Rjal, Valletta

Entrance: €15, concessions at €10

Following last year’s highly successful collaboration between Kelma Kelma – the facebook community dedicated to the intricacies of the Maltese language, the ever popular Big Band Brothers, and the highly versatile actor Ray Calleja, Kelma Kelma Nota Nota is back with a special concert titled KOFFEE MORNING. This innovative project will present a series of traditional and contemporary Maltese prose, poetry and songs, exposing and highlighting aspects of traditional Maltese culture in a contemporary approach.

Tickets are available from ticketline.com.mt and from the Embassy Cinema box office in Valletta from 10am to 9pm. Tickets for Faith, Hope u Charity are available from teatrumanoel.com.mt or from the Manoel Theatre booking office 21246389.

Concessions: For students and senior citizens upon presentation of relevant identification at the door. Free Entrance for children 12 years and under upon presentation of ticket and accompanied by an adult (excluding the performances Faith, Hope u Charity, Kelma Kelma and Romeo and Juliet). Free tickets for children 12 years and under for STOMP are limited. Culture Card accepted. All venues are accessible for wheel chair users. Culture Vulture Ticket €120: Access to all events excluding Faith, Hope u Charity, Kelma Kelma and Romeo and Juliet. Trio Ticket €35: Choose any three events, excluding STOMP, Faith, Hope u Charity, Kelma Kelma and Romeo and Juliet.